Hurray For The Riff Raff: Life On Earth

- It’s been quite a journey for Alynda Segarra, aka Hurray For The Riff Raff. Raised in New York, she started off writing acoustic songs as train-hopping young vagabond – finding inspiration in the great American hobo tradition and taking a stage-name from a classic 90’s folk-punk song.

She eventually settled down as a street busker in the musically rich environs of New Orleans, and had a commercial breakthrough in 2014 with her sixth album Small Town Heroes. The Navigator in 2017 brought a broader musical vision and was a huge critical hit, even seeing her appointed as somewhat of a spokesperson for the Puerto Rican migrant community. Five years later she is back with Life On Earth - on a major label, with a striking new glam image and a newfound love of synth-pop.

Segarra never has been one to stand still I guess. The chorus of opening track Wolves sings “you gotta run babe, you know how to run” – a tribute to her own migrant heritage and inclination to keep on the move.

That song also introduces the new synth-pop trajectory, which is especially prominent on the first half of the record. She does the style well too, though it does still seem Life On Earth’s most powerful moments are folky numbers on acoustic guitar or piano.

The jaunty folk-punk of Rhododendron is like a free-association reflection on Segarra’s past as a teenage travelling punk, finding zest for life in her surroundings, with wildflowers referenced alongside police barricades, naked boys and waking up in a field of corn. The piano ballad title track is the same concept but updated for your mid 30’s, when inspiration doesn’t come quite so easily but you can still find it like “lightning strikes to illuminate the night”.

Precious Cargo is the album’s most political moment, an indictment of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its persecution of migrants. The spoken word delivery of the lyrics has been compared to hip hop, but to me it recalls an old talking-blues number - channelling the radical folkies from the mid 20th century in the way Segarra once implored her fellow folk singers to do in response to racial injustice.

The album closes with the beautiful and very touching Saga, about surviving sexual assault. Hurray For The Riff Raff first came to mainstream attention with The Body Electric – Segarra’s riposte to countless misogynist murder ballad folk songs. But Saga is a tribute to healing and resilience – “I don't want this to be the saga of my life / I just wanna be free, get over it in time”.

“BLESS ALL BEINGS RUNNING FOR THEIR LIVES” says the album artwork in bold text, and this can be interpreted both as those who run out of fear and those who do so out of hope. Sometimes the two blur. Movement is the theme of Life On Earth -  movement across borders, to find adventure and change, or inner movement to transformation and healing. The forays into synth-pop are like the musical embodiment of this lyrical theme.

And movement is what Life On Earth does - moving us to empathy with its portrayals of human struggles, and stirring the deep yearnings within us with its tributes to the joy of life.

- Andy Paine.